Radioactive decay is the strange and almost mystical ability for one element to naturally and spontaneously transmute into another. In the process, those elements tend to emit deadly forms of ...

In this lesson, students will investigate the nature of radioactivity and the effect of both distance and shielding materials on different radioactive sources using a Geiger-Muller tube with a counter ...

Some atoms are stable, while others seem to fall apart. Lead-208 will probably last forever, while the synthetic isotope technetium-99 exists for just hours. The difference lies in the structure of ...

Alpha decay represents a fundamental mode of radioactive disintegration wherein an unstable nucleus emits an alpha particle—a tightly bound cluster of two protons and two neutrons. This process not ...

AFTER the exponential law in radioactive decay had been discovered in 1902, it soon became clear that the time of disintegration of an atom was independent of the previous history of the atom and ...